World Bank accords AAA-rating to PPAF on its performance

BEIJING—Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) is perhaps one of the few organizations in whole of the South Asia that has AAA-rating from the World Bank for its out standing performance.
This was stated by Chief Executive/Managing Director of PPAF Kamal Hayat in an interview with APP Wednesday on the sidelines of seminar on “Taking Action for the World’s Poor and Hungry People” jointly organized by China State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development and International Food Policy Research Institute and co-hosted by International Poverty Reduction Centre in China (IPRC).
The 3-day seminar was also addressed by Vice Premier of China State Council Hui Liangyu while the message of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was also read on the occasion.
We are very happy to say that today we are working on 111 districts, twenty-seven thousand villages and over thirteen thousand infrastructure schemes have been initiated.” He said that the PPAF is also constructing a huger number of houses for poor in the earth quake areas. The PPAF, he said has been established by the government with the special objective of reducing poverty with emphasis on rural areas.
He said that Pakistan has done a good ground for the reduction of poverty and expressed the hope that in future we would be able to further bring down poverty. Kamal Hayat said that government is very conscious of the fact that the empowerment of women is very important as women folk represent fifty percent of the total population and unless the women are engaged one can not get full benefit.
He said that by setting up PPAF, one of our cardinal aims was that we must empower the women. You will be happy to learn that out of all the total benefacries of the PPAF, over forty-eight percent are women “, he noted. He said that it has been observed that the women are getting lot of benefits from the Poverty Alleviation Programme and added that with the passage of time they would shoulder more responsibilities and acquire maximum benefit from this scheme.—Agencies